Obama invokes Koran in key points of Cairo speech

By MARK S. SMITH, The Associated Press
| 3:53 a.m.June 4, 2009

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims", declaring that "this cycle of suspicion and discord must end". The address was designed to reframe relations after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
— AP

U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at Cairo University in Cairo, Thursday, June 4, 2009. In his speech, President Obama called for a "new beginning between the United States and Muslims", declaring that "this cycle of suspicion and discord must end". The address was designed to reframe relations after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the war in Iraq.(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
/ AP

CAIRO 
President Barack Obama's speech reaching out for a fresh start with the Islamic world was laced with references to the Koran and his Muslim roots.

Obama quoted the Holy Koran as commanding, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." He said he shared that conviction, as "rooted in my own experience." The president noted that while he now is a Christian, his father had come from a Kenyan family that "includes generations of Muslims."

He pointed to a Muslim – Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat – as the first to be elected to Congrress, saying he took the oath "using the same Holy Koran that one of our Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, kept in his personal library."

Obama also quoted from the Holy Bible and the Jewish Talmud in making his argument for better relations between the United States and the Muslim world.